Born in New York City, in 1976 I moved with my family to Fairbanks, Alaska to teach for a year in the creative writing program at the University of Alaska. I’m still there. I’ve published six books of poetry, as well as a collection of essays. My work has appeared in The New Yorker and Poetry, among other journals. For more information, visit my website: www.johnmorganpoet.com​

The Bernstein PlotGreen-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NYUp the hill where Washington’s rough-cut men were out-flanked by the British, whipped and fledby dinghy in the night to fight again;here where the city’s blue bloods grave their dead,we’ve trudged in the late August heat past wingsand needles, chiseled mausoleums,marble cherubs (though no choir sings) and found your marker, short on facts, which seems scarcely to grasp what deft band-master, giddyon your more than life-size stage, the world, dreamsunderneath; but at least the grass is tended,bushes trim and ruddy rhododendrons, loudbut not too loud, bloom like an early Mahler ditty,flush among the fashionable crowd. ​

The Sinner at SixInto the candled dark where haloed strangersmingled in jigsaw-puzzle windows, Lily,my Irish nursemaid and first love, snuck mewhenever my Jewish parents nodded.Back when the Mass was still in Latin,one Sunday in my boredomI begged to hold the string of holy beadsshe counted on for luck and inmy fidgets twisted it until it brokeapart and spilled its tiny whiteand purple jewels into my lap.

Shame wet my cheeks and terrorseized me by the throat. I knewthat I was damned and, worse, Lilymight also go to hell for what I’d done,and hell was like the front yard leaves we heapedeach fall and lit, each leaf a separate soulthat shriveled curling inward as it flamed,then turned to smoke and ash. In hell, they said,you burned like that forever. But seeingmy stricken face, she asked me why,and when I unpeeled my young fists fullof tiny lights, she brushed my tears away,and whispered that her beads could be restrung.

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